The Island of Misfit Ideas

Imagine an island sanctuary where defective and unwanted copywriting ideas are left in eternal purgatory. Some ideas live peacefully and happily waiting for their chance to escape. Others die a painless death from the gale force winds of a brain hurricane.

And then, there are some ideas that find a way off, only to pull a Lost once they found out they weren’t supposed to leave.

Here’s the story of our lost blogposts and linkbait projects, and how they found a home on the island of misfit ideas.

“It’s Just Not Our Brand” (aka WTF Were You Thinking?!) Rejections

There are few things in a copywriter’s career that are as crushing as utter rejection. Witness the sad remains of some of our favorite projects that didn’t quite make the cut.

Dear Duvet

The vision: An advice column about bedding, written by a down-loving dog named Duvet who knows good bedding when he sniffs it.

What went wrong:

• Client decided Duvet should actually be a goose, keeping with their down-bedding brand
• Client realized down comes from dead geese

Final outcome:

• Project terminated

Life of a Bean

The vision: We follow the life of Señor Bean (he’s a coffee bean) from blossom to harvest to roast. In cartoon form.

What went wrong:

• Client hated cartoons in general

Final outcome:

• Project reformatted into non-cartoon, boring informational post

10 Weirdest Roommate Ads, Translated

The vision: A roundup of the most hysterically awkward roommate wanted ads, translated to show what they really mean.

What went wrong:

• Direct from client’s email: “The translations are pretty mean-spirited sounding, and don’t really fit with the tone of the site… Beyond that, most of these roommate articles aren’t that unusual.”
• Request we write something more cheerful, like “Most Fun Craigslist Ads”

Final outcome:

• See Ideas That Should Have Been Rejected
• Just kidding
• I meant to say See Following

22 Wedding Dress Nightmares of the Rich and Famous

The vision: To make wedding dresses controversial.

There are no excuses for these wedding dress nightmares of the Rich and Famous. From spendy wedding dresses that look cheap to whorish ensembles better suited for prostitutes than brides, these nightmarish gowns will have you running for the Hollywood Hills.

11. Sharon Stone’s skin-colored mistake

What went wrong:

• “Worish” and “suited for prostitutes” were not what the client was looking for

Final outcome: 

• Project disappeared and was never spoken of again. Until now…

Navajo Meets Nordic

The vision: An in-depth analysis of winter fashion trends and 2010′s mashup of wooly Nordic sweaters and southwestern, American Indian designs.

Navajo patterns started popping up on fashion runways in 2009, but it wasn’t until this year that hippy shawls turned haute. Throughout the spring and summer, gorgeous graphics graced sun dresses and mini-skirts; come this season’s blustery weather, it’s all about native Navajo geometrics – the warmer the better.

What went wrong:

• No one actually knows. This piece disappeared into an internet abyss, never to be read.
• Advice from account manager: “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
• Still wondering what that means….

Probable Future Rejections

There are ideas that just never quit. They linger, waiting in the background to spring into linkbait action whenever the call comes in.

However… there is a reason they have yet to be used.

Food additives that look like drugs

The vision: Food additives are fascinating. They are created in labs, they can keep a piece of bread from molding for up to nine weeks, and they may or may not be terrible for your health.

And they all look a little bit like cocaine.

Monosodium Phosphate

Tri-magnesium Citrate

What went wrong:

• Not very many people want to be associated with the sale and distribution of hard drugs
• South American cartels?
• We dream big

Hot Chicks on Ugly Cars

The vision: The world’s most glamorous gals modeling the world’s most pathetic cars. Just how much can sex sell?

Ideally this would be in calendar form.

What went wrong:

• Exposed breasts
• Limited funds to pay for hot models

Cars That Make You Look Like a Douche

The vision: A guy’s guide on how not to look like a total tool while he drives.

What went wrong:

• Finding a client who will approve of the word “douche”
• Finding a client who is okay with us calling their product “douchey”

Ideas that Should Have Been Rejected… But Weren’t

As a copywriter, creating a brilliant idea takes creativity, vision and attention to detail. This is what happens if you forget one of those key elements.

Will a Tungsten Ring Blend?

The Vision: A parody of the already corny Will It Blend commercials. We dropped a tungsten carbide ring into an old blender and watched the magic fly.

What went wrong:

• Did it blend? No
• Can I act? Hell, no

Final outcome:

• Over 1,000 views on YouTube. Thanks Mom.

Massage Chairs

The Vision: Blurry from laughter. Luckily for us, we were the editors of this colossal copy mishap. Unfortunately for the client, there’s no telling how long this chair promised to “air press with heckle and perineum.”

What went wrong:

• Original writer had a bit of a language barrier
• After looking up the word perineum, we giggled like little girls for over a week

Final outcome:

• Turns out the chair actually massages the perineum. We stand corrected

Lacking Mad Skillz

These are some ideas that might actually be cool. We just didn’t have the know-how or the Photoshop skills to bring them to life.

Rejected SyFy Rejects

The Vision: We thought up the most horrifically terrible SyFy movie characters for our roundup of the SyFy Channel Lost Scripts.

What went wrong: There are still a few monsters that didn’t make the list, including:

• Tyrannosaurus Fox – We knew it was going to be half tyrannosaurus rex / half fox, but we couldn’t decide if it was going to be a tyrannosaurus rex the size of a fox, or a fox the size of a tyrannosaurus rex.
• Giraffeula – We were thinking it was going to be a giraffe/Dracula, but the name suggests it’s a half giraffe/half tarantula. Could you imagine an eight-legged giraffe? That’s almost too frightening to put on paper.
• Hippotatotamus – We still don’t know what we were thinking with the hippo combined with potato idea. It floats and has tons of eyes?

Final outcome:

• Manadillo & Five Other SyFy Channel Lost Scripts is pretty awesome. Check it out.

Swarm Badge

The Vision: Back when geo-targeted social media was just getting off the ground, we planned to do a swarm badge party where 50 people would meet in one location and check-in on Foursquare. It was going to be awesome, and we were going to live blog the whole thing.

What went wrong:

• Had a hard time explaining what the heck Foursquare is to a client
• Few people could use Foursquare in the dark ages of the smart phone (a.k.a. early 2010)
• We’d have to convince our boss to let three copywriters goof off work all day in a coffee shop

Final outcome:

• Swarm badge never happened

Too Racy to Work

Slipping in a line or two or three about sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs is the joy of being a copywriter.

And the pang of being a copyeditor is cutting them out before the client sees them and angering your entire team.

Some of our favorite racy lines:

Choice Words:

“You don’t need a hot rod to get a hot broad,”

” …how awkward it is when it’s time for him to put his doohickey in her thingamajigger”

“The Life Miracle Magnetic Laundry System won’t make your butt itch, plus it’s eco-friendly and economically sound.”

“You are impressed with how I handle my sniper? You should see what I can do with my weapon under the armor.”

Random & funny, especially when taken out of context:

Don’t have sex when there are cameras around.

You can start crotch grabbing with this red “Beat It,” jacket for only $100 dollars.

Burn your candle into the wee hours of the night

A foggy metaphor is the worst way to explain sex to a child, short of a demonstration that incorporates realistic ceramic genitalia.

Final outcome: Either these never saw the clients’ eyes or we had one of those totally cool clients who let it slide. Either way, we’ll never stop writing racy lines.

The Too Controversial for Clients Ideas:

Every copywriter thinks this to herself once in a while:

This job would be great if it wasn’t for the fracking clients.

Don’t get us wrong. We love clients. We love their products. We’re happy to support their business and want them to succeed.  We know without them we wouldn’t have jobs.

But they also kill the best ideas – ideas that have been presented in brain hurricanes and turn down because they’re just “too controversial,” for the client’s pg-rated website.

Ideas that would never have seen the light of day. Until now…

Brett Favre Birthday Suit Sexts

The Vision: In typical Friday-afternoon fashion, our team started bantering about Favre’s favorite new hobby: sexting hotties pictures of his favorite…err teammate.

And that spawned the greatest idea we’ve ever had: the Brett Birthday Suit Sexts website. Instead of the boring video, Farve would send a Happy Birthday Sext of himself in his birthday suit.

What went wrong:

• We’re pretty darn certain there’s a legal issue with sending sexts from a sports star. Unless we happen to get that sports star’s permission (Favre… are you on board with this?)
• How do we, as a tech-tarded team set up an automated sexting script?

What Would Snooki Do?

The Vision: A brilliant satire. Picture the guidette’s tangerine face photoshopped on Jesus’ body. And then a lot of really witty lines about DUIs and vehicular manslaughter.

Direct from the client email:

“Equating Snooki with Jesus. While we might not have a problem saying something like this on our personal blog, our company is run by a devout Christian who would take offense to photoshopping Snooki’s head onto Jesus. Also, the line about Snooki being more popular than Jesus, while good snark, would cross the line of things we are comfortable saying on our blog.

What went wrong:

• Conservative clients don’t love, love, love satirical pieces that compare over-tanned almost-midgets to the Big Guy in the Sky. Who knew?

Final outcome:

• Infamous Snooki post was swiftly deleted from their console. And the writer no longer works here …

How to Commit the Perfect Murder

….Using this cosmetic bag

The Vision: Our client’s cosmetic bag features a removable soft pearl liner. Therefore, the product has a unique brand positioning: it holds your ninja star, your stabbing knife, your syringe of poison, and any other mini-murder instruments.

Possible future tagline: Carries your cosmetics (and your kill tools)

What went wrong: The client does not watch Dexter. Plus, if a murderer actually used this idea, we’d all be dead.

Final outcome: Never sent to client. Thus, they’re still a client

Ideas that are Too Smart

One of the curses of that afflicts any copy writing team is that sometimes your ideas are just too brilliant for other people to comprehend. It’s all part of the burden of being a genius. Unfortunately, people don’t realize it when they’re looking at the world’s next masterpiece.

*sigh*

Anyways, here are a few ideas of pure, unadulterated genius that world just wasn’t ready for.

The Gaga Effect: Celebrity Halloween Costume Choices

The Vision: Ok, so what if a bunch of celebrities went to the same Halloween party and all dressed up as each other? Why, their choices would be very revealing to their inner thoughts and feelings, right?? And of course, the most popular selection amongst celebrities would be to dress up as Lady Gaga in her meat dress. This idea is so logical, how could it confuse anyone?

What went wrong:

• Fictional characters dressing up as real celebrities, and vice versa
• Our “flow chart” displaying perhaps the most confusing flow in the history of streams and rivers, which is very extensive
• Batman dressing up Heath Ledger-dressed-up-as-batman. Try to wrap your head around that
• How the hell does Don Draper dress up as Tiger Woods?

… My head hurts just thinking about all of this.

Shirts that make you look like you’re part of the wall

The Vision: Admit it. The image above is funny. We figured we could harness the comedic power of people wearing shirts that blend into the walls and use it to our advantage. It was going to be a greatest hits of weird people blending into the backgrounds. The only thing we had to left to do was find a way to connect it to apartment hunting.

What went Wrong:

• There is no way to connect this to apartment hunting
• …well, maybe there is, but it would have required an immense stretch of the imagination that most human beings aren’t capable of
• How do you search for images that fit this requirement? Typing “people wearing shirts that blend into the wall behind them” into Google doesn’t really yield that many viable results. We got about this far before deciding to bag The Vision:

Totally Useless/Homeless Ideas

You never know when inspiration will strike you.  The problem is, inspiration sometimes has no regard for who your clients are or what their message is.

Here are a few ideas that gave us a full head of creative steam, but ultimately were as useless as unicorn with no horn (because then it’s just a horse).

Jennifer Petkov Facebook Page

The Vision: When we caught wind of the reprehensible acts of Detroit’s own Jennifer Lyn Petkov, we realized that this wretched woman was about to receive a veritable avalanche of internet hatred. We also realized that we should try to cash in on this phenomenon. So, like prospectors running out and staking claim to their land before anyone else can, we quickly created the “Jennifer Lyn Petkov Sucks” Facebook page before anyone else could. Before we knew it, we had over 750 fans.

What went wrong:

• How does one turn internet bullying into money?
• It turns out creating a post that says, “Gosh, what a horrible lady this Petkov is… you know what’s not terrible? This sweet antique reproduction Honduran mahogany furniture!” is a bad advertising strategy.